You know you’ve officially become a slob when you look down at a puppy chewing a pair of £350 Manolos and think, ‘Oh, thank heavens, she’s gone quiet.’
I started this spaniel-raising business with a million good intentions about being firm and using every difficult moment as an opportunity to teach and improve.
‘No, Cydney, leave,’ I said endlessly for the first 72 hours. ‘Cydney, Cydney, leave, leave, Cydney, leave…No, no…’ On and on it went. ‘Leave it, leave it, leave it, leave the rabbit, Cydney! Leave it! CYDNEY! Not the phone, NO! Leave the BlackBerry! Leave, leave it…’
After a few days, I was whimpering, ‘Oh, god, please, Cydney, have the empty bottle of Highland Spring. What’s that, you want the TV remote? Oh, yes, fine, you chew all the buttons off that then, it’s probably best…[yawn, snore].’
I’ve got to the stage where I look at every object in my house in terms of the time it will take the puppy to grow tired of chewing it. Havaina flip flop — two minutes, useless; La Perla pyjamas — five to ten minutes, quite good value; Birkin bag — 15 minutes, almost enough time for a nap!
I look outside my back door and see the little kritter chewing the heads off one of my favourite blue hydrangeas and think, ‘Ah, well, it’s had its day.’
She’s worn me down. Despite being a natural obsessive, I’ve become laissez-faire. She started off sleeping in her special dog cage — I think they call it a crate, rather disconcertingly — and now she sleeps on the bed. I wake up in the morning missing my earplugs and with more than usually matted hair.
I went to have my highlights done and the hairdresser brushed my hair out and said, ‘You do realise you’ve got a bald patch at the back of your head, don’t you?’
‘Puppy,’ I said.
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